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SEEKING SALAMANCA MITCHELL

Name: SEEKING SALAMANCA MITCHELL
Author: Kenji Jasper
ISBN: 0-7679-1675-1

by Kenji Jasper ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 13, 2004

Written in loose, loping prose, a story that’s entertaining enough, though in the end rather quietly routine.

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A jazzy, fluent rendering of the life of an aspiring musician and composer who finds himself jailed for seven years just as his great love gives birth to their child.

Jasper’s third (after Dakota Grand, 2002, etc.) opens with Benjamin Baker, a young, bright African-American boy on the streets of DC, taking a job with Alfonse Mitchell, the successful owner of a neighborhood restaurant. Mitchell, seeing promise in the diligent Baker, invites him to assist in some shady late-night robberies—crimes that help support Mitchell’s enviably lavish lifestyle. Baker, who has become one of Mitchell’s most trusted lookouts during the residential robberies, finds himself entranced by Salamanca, Mitchell’s daughter. (As is Jasper’s writerly habit, there are no average women in his work: they are either pear-shaped, wise older women, or nodes of erotic desire, sweet young things with bustout bosoms and bottoms). Plunged into a deep love that thrums to the beat of Baker’s lively musical compositions, the couple begins to plan a future every bit as bright as their present circumstances foretell. But Baker is set up, takes the fall for Mitchell, and goes to jail shortly after Salamanca confides in him that she’s pregnant. Baker keeps his sanity while he’s inside by remembering Salamanca’s love and thinking about seeing her again—while Salamanca herself goes into hiding from her father, the man who took her lover down. After his release, Baker is tempted to rejoin his musician friends but stays true to his only meaningful goal: to find Salamanca and start things over. Yet the itch for revenge on Mitchell is strong, and though the old man eventually gets his due, Baker narrowly escapes disaster.

Written in loose, loping prose, a story that’s entertaining enough, though in the end rather quietly routine.

Pub Date: July 13, 2004

ISBN: 0-7679-1675-1

Page Count: 368

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE HOUSE ON CHILDRESS STREET
by Kenji Jasper

- BOOK REVIEW
DARK
by Kenji Jasper

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.